Driving and driven members such as a metallic driving shaft and a metallic driven shaft must be coupled to transmit required torques from the driving to the driven shaft. The coupling arrangement must take into account that misalignment between the driving and driven shafts frequently occurs. This misalignment must be accommodated without high stress concentration. Further, depending on the degree of misalignment, the coupling arrangement must function so that excessive wear caused by fretting when the two metallic shafts are subjected to relative motion does not occur.
The invention described and claimed in commonly assigned copending U.S. application Ser. No. 394,241, filed July 1, 1982, by the present inventor and now abandoned accommodates driving/driven shaft misalignment by providing a non-metallic adapter through which the metallic driving shaft and the metallic driven shaft are directly coupled one to the other. While this arrangement has been found satisfactory for some conditions of misalignment, it has been found that other conditions of misalignment are best accommodated by providing an independent member which couples the driving and driven shafts. Moreover, the adapter described in the aforenoted U.S. application Ser. No. 394,241 is space consuming and hence not desirable for some applications. Additionally, the present arrangement which features an independent coupling member, as will be hereinafter described, accommodates driving/driven shaft misalignment more effectively than has heretofore been possible. Accordingly, the present invention is an improvement over that described in the aforenoted U.S. application Ser. No. 394,241.